The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find themselves on peaceful Dulkis, a planet
where war has been eradicated. But landing at the same time are the
warlike Dominators and their diminutive robots, the Quarks. The Dominators
plan to detonate a bomb in Dulkis' core, thereby turning the planet into a
radioactive ball with which they can fuel their space fleet.

Production

Although recent seasons of Doctor Who had managed to produce some
popular new monsters -- such as the Cybermen, the Yeti and the Ice
Warriors -- none of them had offered the same merchandise appeal as the
Daleks. Terry Nation's creations had last appeared in the programme in
mid-1967's The Evil Of The Daleks, and while
Nation had not ruled out their returning to Doctor Who, he was
actively shopping the monsters as potential stars in their own series,
both in the UK and in the United States.

Therefore, in late 1967 producer Peter Bryant asked Yeti creators Mervyn
Haisman and Henry Lincoln to develop a new monster for Doctor Who
which would be as marketable as the Daleks. Haisman and Lincoln had just
finished work on the second Yeti story, The Web Of
Fear. Observing that much of the Daleks' appeal lay in the fact
that they didn't just look like a man in a costume, the writers developed
the Quarks -- squat robots with sinister, childlike voices. Haisman and
Lincoln thought that different attachments could be mounted on the Quarks'
arms, increasing their commercial appeal. The robots' names came from a
family of subatomic particles whose existence had first been theorised in
1964.

The writers wanted to explore what they saw as the
misguidedly passive philosophy of the hippie movement

For the story which would introduce the Quarks, Haisman and Lincoln wanted
to get away from the purely action-adventure nature of their previous
Doctor Who scripts. They elected to explore what they saw as the
misguidedly passive philosophy of the hippie movement, and submitted the
idea to Bryant on January 1st, 1968; a story breakdown was duly
commissioned the following day, under the title of The Dominators.
The six-part adventure was allocated the production code Serial TT,
apparently replacing an unknown story which was dropped after the script
for its first episode did not meet the approval of Bryant and story editor
Derrick Sherwin. The Dominators would be the penultimate serial of
Doctor Who's fifth recording block, to be followed by the four-part
The Mind Robber.

The breakdown stage did not go entirely smoothly, with Haisman and Lincoln
being asked to modify their storyline before the scripts were finally
commissioned on February 2nd. The writers drew upon Latin for many of
their character names, including Bovem (“bull”), Senex
(“old man”; he was originally called Somex, derived from the
Latin word for “sleep”), and Dulcian (“beautiful
people”; “The Beautiful People” had also been considered
as a title for the serial). The name Cully, meanwhile, is actually a word
meaning “dupe”.

Unfortunately, the storyline problems continued into March, by which time
Haisman and Lincoln had submitted scripts for the first three episodes.
Sherwin felt that the writers had included too many satirical elements at
the expense of actual incident and requested a suitable overhaul of the
storyline, despite extreme reluctance on the part of Haisman and Lincoln.
Sherwin's views were backed up by the director assigned to The
Dominators, Morris Barry, who had most recently handled The Tomb Of The Cybermen a year earlier. Aware
that the writers were disinclined to make wholesale changes to the
adventure, Sherwin and his assistant, Terrance Dicks, started rewriting
episode four following its delivery, without informing Haisman and
Lincoln.

The Dominators would be
truncated to five episodes, with the sixth forming a prologue to The Mind Robber

Finally, after part five arrived at the Doctor Who production
office on March 22nd, Bryant asked to meet with the writers that
afternoon. He informed Haisman and Lincoln that they would not be required
to provide the final episode, although they would be paid in full for all
six installments. Bryant and Sherwin subsequently elected to truncate
The Dominators to just five parts; the sixth episode would now form
a prologue to The Mind Robber. In order to
accommodate this, Sherwin generally compacted Haisman and Lincoln's
storyline for parts four, five and six down to just two installments.
Latterly, the writers decided that they no longer wished to have their
names appear on the revised serial, and requested that it be credited to
the pseudonym “Norman Ashby”, created from the names of their
fathers-in-law.

Because of the change in length of Serials TT and UU, and with the
character of Zoe now a firmer part of the production office's plans, Wendy
Padbury was issued a new contract on April 24th. This covered episodes
from The Dominators through to the first serial of the sixth
recording block. Filming began the next day at Gerrards Cross Quarry in
Buckinghamshire. The 26th was occupied with model shooting at the
Television Centre Puppet Theatre. Then cast and crew headed to the Olley
Sand Pit in Trottiscliffe, Kent on the 28th before returning to Gerrards
Cross on the 29th. It was then planned to spend three days at the Ealing
Television Film Studios, but because the location material had not been
completed, the Ealing work was compressed into two days (April 30th and
May 1st). May 2nd was instead spent at Gerrards Cross, and an additional
day at the same location was allocated for the 3rd.

As usual, all five episodes of The Dominators were recorded on
consecutive Fridays. The entire serial was taped at the BBC's Television
Centre, with Studio 4 playing host to parts one and two before the final
three installments shifted to TC3. The first episode went before the
cameras on May 17th. Unusually, part three was captured on 35mm film
rather than the usual 625-line videotape; the “Episode 3”
caption was also inadvertently omitted from the start of the programme on
the recording day, May 31st. Production wrapped up on June 14th. However,
the broadcast of The Dominators was not planned to take place for
nearly two months, as it was decided to hold it over (along with The Mind Robber) to begin Doctor Who's
sixth season.

Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln threatened to go to court
to prevent the broadcast of The
Dominators

It appears that relations between Haisman and Lincoln and the Doctor
Who production office improved somewhat following the end of recording
on The Dominators. Indeed, by early summer the writers were working
on a third Yeti serial, called “The Laird of McCrimmon”.
Unfortunately, things fell to pieces during the summer. Both parties
entered into merchandising endeavours involving the Quarks without the
permission of the other, leading to a dispute over whether the writers
owned the copyright to the Quarks wholly, or whether it was shared with
the BBC. A series of meetings was held during July in an effort to resolve
the matter; things became so acrimonious that, at one point, Haisman and
Lincoln threatened to go to court to prevent the broadcast of The
Dominators.

Finally, however, a deal was reached and The Dominators part one
was transmitted on August 10th. However, there was now no question of
Haisman and Lincoln continuing to write for Doctor Who, and
“The Laird Of McCrimmon” was abandoned. The pair continued
their partnership for some years, contributing to programmes such as
Softly, Softly. On his own, Haisman wrote for shows including
The Onedin Line and became the script editor for Sutherland's
Law. He died of heart failure on October 29th, 2010. Lincoln,
meanwhile, essentially abandoned drama in favour of researching the
mystery of a religious treasure discovered in the French village of
Rennes-le-Château in the late nineteenth century.

The Dominators was also the last Doctor Who serial directed
by Barry. He worked on programmes like Z Cars before concentrating
on producing, overseeing shows such as Poldark. Barry also took on
the occasional acting job, and this permitted him a final contribution to
Doctor Who, playing Tollund in Season Seventeen's The Creature From The Pit. Morris Barry passed
away in December 2000.